Leave No Trace
Many hikers, campers, and other outdoor enthusiasts know the saying, “Leave No Trace”. The National Park Service publishes websites and physical cards explaining the principles of Leave No Trace (2022). The seven principles are:
- Plan Ahead and Prepare
- Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces
- Dispose of Waste Properly
- Leave What You Find
- Minimize Campfire Impacts
- Respect Wildlife
- Be Considerate of Other Visitors
(2022)
You can find more information about the principles here. While everyone exploring national parks and nature should know them all, the idea is to leave things the way you found them and ensure others can enjoy natural spaces as you did after you left.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where people affect change in areas beyond where they live and visit. Industry changes have impacted the climate and conditions on the other side of the world. We can no longer ensure that future generations will be able to enjoy the outdoors like we have without making some changes.
Predicted Data
This page uses data from predicted data. The projected data is split into two terms: near-term from 2021 to 2059 and long-term from 2060 to 2099. The near-term and long-term data were predicted using two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) and twenty General Circulation Model (GCM) scenarios (2022). The two RCPs are based on a medium mitigation and stabilization scenario, RCP4.5, and a high baseline, no-policy scenario, RCP8.5 (2022). The twenty GCM scenarios are built based on models from SOILWAT2. You can find more information on the models here. (2023). The predicted data shown in the plots below are from the twenty GCMs are averaged together to give a single value for each observation for the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 predictions.
Water Availability
All life on Earth needs water to survive. In this section, we will compare annual precipitation and the amount of water available in the top 50 cm of soil. These two features should provide valuable insights into whether water is available to animals and plants in the area.
Precipitation
The three plots below show the average annual precipitation among all observation sites for the historical data, predicted near-term data and predicted long-term data. Averaging the twenty models together reduces the variance in the predicted data, leading to a higher mean annual precipitation and lower variance than the historical data. Based on these charts and a look at the basic statistics during EDA. The future will have little impact on the amount of precipitation.
Soil Water Availability
# seasonal swa50temperature
# Mean Temperature# Max summer TemeratureConclusion
Ecology, Dryland. 2023. “SOILWAT2.” October 24, 2023. https://github.com/DrylandEcology/SOILWAT2.
Service, National Park. 2022. “Leave No Trace Seven Principles.” May 16, 2022. https://www.nps.gov/articles/leave-no-trace-seven-principles.htm.
———. 2024. “Natural Bridges.” April 25, 2024. https://www.nps.gov/nabr/index.htm.
Survey, U. S. Geological. 2022. “Climate and Drought Adaptation: Historical and Projected Future Exposure Metrics for Southeastern Utah Group National Parks.” March 2, 2022. https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/file/get/61a6952fd34eb622f6978d9f?f=__disk__78%2F99%2F9b%2F78999b749568b2fbba86ce5dc9fc89aebe469388&transform=1&allowOpen=true.